


Rising from the Ashes

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-04 23:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11001594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: As the Blossom house burns, Cheryl prepares to rise from the ashes.





	Rising from the Ashes

She watched it burn, and she felt nothing, as though there was a kernel of crystallised ice where her heart used to be, like the crystallised ice that had surrounded her before Archie Andrews had fished her out of the water.

Why should Cheryl feel anything? All that she was destroying was the empty shell, the belongings that meant nothing, the trappings that came from dirty money. None of that counted for anything, not against her brother’s life.

How far back had the lies gone? As far back as her great grandparents, who had wiped Betty’s great grandparents from the family tree like that crazy lady in the Harry Potter books, meaning Cheryl didn’t even know that she and Betty were related? Or had the real lying begun with her parents, with her father using the maple syrup company as a front for his real drug business? “You’re a Blossom, through and through,” her father had said, and those had been words Cheryl had longed to hear for such a long time, but now she wished she could wipe the stain of her name away just as the Coopers had done all those years ago, because that was no longer something she wished to be.

Jason….had he been trying to protect her, by never telling Cheryl what he suspected about their father? He must have been; he’d protected her from everything, from stupid things like the graffiti he’d caught Reggie writing about her in the boys’ bathroom in ninth grade to the times as kids when he’d insisted on a joint birthday party because no one would have come to hers or he would take the blame for things she did because he knew their parents would go easier on him. He’d talked with Cheryl, planned with her about faking his own death, and Cheryl had never understood why, but had gone along with it, knowing he must have a reason, but knowing he would contact her when the time was right. But then had come the truth about Polly, and Cheryl wondered what else Jason had never told her.

And her mother? What, if anything, had she known about Clifford Blossom’s drugs business? Had she known about it the while time and covered it up? Or was she really just the trophy wife she seemed, knowing nothing, playing the good little wife and mother? Was anyone in her family what they seemed?

She watched the house burn, taking with it memories of all the times she had felt her mother barely tolerated her, the times her father had lied to her, the times Jason had kept things from her, and the memories of times with her friends Tina and Ginger, who Cheryl was beginning to realise were not as good friends now as Veronica, Archie, Betty and Kevin. What did they matter? She felt no connection to any of them now. Let the shame of the Blossom family be wiped clean, let them burn, and Cheryl now knew that she would rise from the ashes like a phoenix, make a fresh start.


End file.
